"Go watch some good dressage, you'll be a better rider"

I realized I haven’t introduced the horses!

Dolly: Middle aged, Draft/TB mare, 16.2hh-ish. She has been here since she was an unbroken 4yo. Steady, slow, reliable, probably wishes she was a plow horse or at least more of a lawn ornament. She goes on the flat, jumps, and is of course super fun to hack/trail ride

Runoff: Dolly’s first baby, ¾ Thoroughbred. She is about 10 years old, 17.1hh. She is steady like Dolly, but much more forward off the ground than her, and isn’t in a hurry. I really enjoy riding her, and I know I’ll miss her when the summer is over. My leg goes about halfway down her belly, and some days I wonder if my femur is long enough to effectively wrap my leg around her (See below for pictures if you don't know what I am talking about!). Here is a picture of me standing with her and Ami. It makes me giggle. 

Tommy: A Connemara/TB gelding, brother to Ami and Peggy (All three are by the Connemara stallion Skyview’s Orion). He is about 9, and is very broke but doesn’t have much for consistent, long term riding. This summer he is being brought back after a year off and the plan is to see how it goes, and it looks like he needs some more body work. His “air freshener” brand on his left hip is from Lone Pine Farm, out of Deer Park, Washington.

Jack: Dolly’s second baby. He is three, and by a TB/Holsteiner. He reminds me of a little brother, a little annoying but super cute and sweet. He is being long lined and ponied from Dolly, and will be backed this summer getting to walk, trot, and hopefully canter under saddle. He looks like he'll grow up into a really fancy dude! 

Peggy Sue: A Connemara/Arab mare, born here and acquired by Deb a few years ago. I actually knew her before they got her when she was on Vashon for a year. She has since grown up a lot, has gone eventing to training level, and done a lot of clinics. Here Kari, my second year Pullman roommate, riding her. 

Tiger: A home bred horse of some sort of TB/Irish/Selle Francais combination, and super fancy and smart. Beautiful face, and when she is done being an awkward two-year-old she’ll turn a lot of heads.  She already belongs to one of Tom’s students and is enjoying being a horse with a big pasture for the time being. This is her letting me take a picture of her. 

As for this week riding has been filled with jumping as well as a surprising amount of time dedicated to visiting Pullman. My current roommates are in the process of vacating so I decided I should like, make sure I have things to cook with, eat off of, and be able to shower as most of those things are owned by other people and vacating with them. Also, I love riding horses and living at the farm, but it’s going to be a long summer of riding three or four horses a day and it’s nice to go back to civilization and hang out with people.

I did courses on Runoff and Ami, no XC except for that one time on Runoff. Runoff tried to see how much she could get away with when I was riding her for the first time. After sorting through that riding her to a fence didn’t feel as freely forward and relaxed as it has been, but hopefully I made an impression on her and we won’t have further issues. Tom told me I did a good job on my last sequence, and I’ll try not to think about if he meant “good job overall” or “good job making yourself ride.” 

Ami was a blast. She was relaxed, she was soft, she was ride-able, she was point-and-shoot, and everything a person would want to see in a jumper. Now we just need to maintain that over an actual course with some height! She let me “just sit” as Tom puts it and kept her rhythm all the way to the base and hopped over it like “Hey Girl, I got this, you just sit up and enjoy the ride. Great job being soft in your elbows.”

I was told that Ami and Runoff are going to a show some weekend in the near future. I think it’s an event derby, so dressage phase and then a combined stadium-cross country phase, all in one day, I think. It could be the “Shedding Off” schooling show with rail classes like equitation and dressage suitability, with some jump courses in the afternoon. We went up to Spokane today to a facility called Deep Creek to watch some of Tom’s students compete in a derby there. Watching the whole scene made me excited to be part of it again. Here is a picture of the jump field from a hill with a training or prelim long on top of it. 

In other news, I rode Dolly with a driving rein (the reins backwards through my hands) and finally felt like my arms were being soft of their own accord, not of my own concentration and will. Also, I was told to watch good dressage, so I am taking that to mean to go watch some on YouTube. Yay for horse-internship homework!